First 2018 Reading List

History

Like most of my history reading over the last year I continued following threads from last year. With the exception of (I assume no more will be written by this proliferate unit) my last book on the K/3/5 Marines, everything here is in the European Theater and I followed the trail started with Churchill and Orwell back to the Battle of Britain.

Black Thursday: The Story of the Schweinfurt Raid. Martin Caidin — this was one of those 99 cents WW2 books I can’t resist. I find Martin Caidin a bit dated and I don’t care for the writing (a bit overwritten) but still interesting.

Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific. R.V. Burgin, Bill Marvel. This book served as one of those as the basic for The Pacific and on a whim I bought it. It told many of the same stories I’d seen in Spielberg’s miniseries or read about in the With the Old Breed.

Park: The Biography of Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park. Vincent Orange — I’m not finished with this yet (a good reminder I need to) but this is actually a fairly readable bio of the leader that was largely responsible for the victory in the Battle of Britain who was relieved shortly afterwards. It was interesting (and inspirational) to learn how Park persevered through health issues between the world wars.

The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo. Walter Lord — this was another 99 cent WW2 book from one of the better writers. I’d previous read Miracle at Midway and having seen the Dunkirk movie last summer I wanted to learn more.

Leadership

Unfortunately, I haven’t finished any of these in entirety so this is a good reminder that I need to make progress before spending any more on leadership books. Most of these were either recommended by folks on Twitter, co-workers, or Amazon itself.

One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams. Chris Fussell, C. W. Goodyear, General Stanley McChrystal.

Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results. Judith E. Glaser.

Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations. Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim.

Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude. Raymond M. Kethledge, Michael S. Erwin, Jim Collins.

Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow.
Dominica Degrandis, Tonianne DeMaria.

How F*cked Up Is Your Management?: An uncomfortable conversation about modern leadership. Johnathan Nightingale, Melissa Nightingale.